The Singer: After firing Ozzy due to the frontman's substance-abuse problems, founding bandmembers Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, and Geezer Butler tapped former Rainbow vocalist (and future metal icon) Ronnie James Dio to saddle up with Sabbath. Oddly, it was the future Sharon Osbourne, then Sharon Arden, who introduced Dio to Iommi. Evilness Level: High. Dio's arrival was a revitalizing Satan-send for a band coming off the tired Technical Ecstasy and unintentionally ironically-titled Never Say Die. The tempos were faster ("Neon Knights" is almost punkish), the melodies more ornate, the lyrics more fantastical. The music wasn't, couldn't be, as groundbreaking as Sabbath's best '70s work, but it's arguably just as good. Best Song: "Die Young"

The Singer: Ronnie James Dio Evilness Level: Slightly less evil than Heaven and Hell. Drummer Bill Ward had quit the band in between the release of this album and its predecessor, with metal journeyman Vinny Appice taking his place. The result was a more lumbering album than its predecessor, which had a molten flow to its rhythms. Dio's melodies and singing, though, interact with Iommi's lines in sweeping, dramatic fashion, lending a still-mighty grandeur to the brutality. Best Song: "Falling Off the Edge of the World"

Singer: Ian Gillan Evilness Level: The grotesquely chintzy cover is the most haunting thing about the band's first post-Dio effort. Sabbath's second unintentionally ironically-titled album in five years, Born Again had promising pedigree, as it featured erstwhile Deep Purple singer Gillan. Unfortunately, the Purple-Black combo mostly resulted in a musical welt. Bill Ward is back on drums, and Iommi and bassist Butler are pulverizing in spots, but the spirit jsut wasn't there. "Trashed," "Disturbing the Priest," and the allegedly Spinal Tap-inspiring "Stonehenge" scan like a band trying to pull off a (bad) Black Sabbath impression. Best Song: "Zero the Hero"

Singer: Glenn Hughes Evilness Level: Surprisingly evil for what is a Black Sabbath album in name only. Ward and Butler were gone for Seventh Star, which was intended to be a Tony Iommi solo effort before business minds prevailed upon the guitarist to put the words "Black" and "Sabbath" on the cover to assist sales. (Future KISS sub Eric Singer mans the drums and Dave Spitz handles bass.) Despite the lineup shuffling, there's an appealingly cheesy, near-gothic vibe to the stately title track and power ballad "Stranger to Love," both sung with effective intensity by Hughes, another former Deep Purple vocalist. If you approached the album as mainstream '80s pop metal rather than something intended to be harder and heavier, it was inoffensively entertaining. But it's not Black Sabbath. Best Song: "Seventh Star"

Singer: Tony Martin Evilness Level: As evil as a cut-rate vampire costume. Even at his most uninspired, Iommi could bang out a devil-summoning riff (though his tone here is wafer-thin and over-processed), which he does on "The Shining" and "Hard Life to Love." Those mildly inspired moments are not enough to save this stinker. The mushily mystical lyrics, cornball synth coloring, rote rhythms (Ward and Butler were still on the Sabbath outs), and the characterless wailing of Iommi's fellow Birmingham-er Martin, stifled an album that could be used as a template for how to make underwhelming and over-serious metal. Best Song: "Born to Lose"

Singer: Tony Martin Evilness Level: You know those haunted houses that you can pay to run around in while some bored college student in a blood-spackled goalie mask half-heartedly accosts you? Well, those are way more evil than this album. Martin's melodies and vocals are generic, Iommi's playing is tinny, Cozey Powell's drums are brittle. Circa 1989, there were, no exaggeration, hundreds of bands playing hook-driven metal better than Sabbath was at this point. Best Song: "Headless Cross"

Singer: Tony Martin Evilness level: As the third album in a trio of mind-numbingly unoriginal and bland metal gunk, the Viking-themed Tyr only could be termed evil if you pretended that the low quality was, in itself, a means towards evil ends. In other words, Tyr is depressingly bad. The most interesting sounds come from Geoff Nicholl's fussy keyboard playing, which sounds like it pranced in from a Whitesnake record. Best Song: "Law Maker"

Singer: Ronnie James Dio Evilness Level: High! Blessedly, Dio is back, giving the band its first distinct vocal and lyrical presence since Mob Rules. Geezer Butler also finally appears on a Sabbath album after a nine-year absence. Iommi, unencumbered by hacks, is appropriately re-inspired, ditching the overly synthetic guitar sound of the Martin years. "Computer God" and the grandiose "After All" would've fit in nicely on the earlier Dio-Sabbath albums (assuming RJD had thought to write about computers in the early '80s). Best Song: "TV Crimes"

Singer: Tony Martin Evilness: Boo! Exactly as evil as that. Dio went back to his solo career and Sabbath went back to sub-mediocrity. It's hard to overstate the pre-fab flatness of Martin's growling and howling. Butler was still around, so the songs weren't as leaden as they typically were when he was on the outs, and Iommi's playing didn't revert to his prior Martin-era digital fizzle. But if I ever have access to a time machine, I'm taking an axe to whatever cheese-emitting synth the band used to smother the faint signs of life in this music. Best Song: "Evil Eye"

Singer: Tony Martin Evilness: No one does lightweight metal like Tony Martin! So: Forbidden is not at all evil. At least the bandmembers, again minus Geezer Butler, were willing to experiment, bringing in Ice-T to rap on the bridge of "Illusion of Power." On the negative side: everything else. Sadly, the aforementioned cameo alone makes Forbidden the cream of the wilted crop that is the Tony Martin era. Best Song: "Illusion of Power"